HELEN
BENHAM: I am with Dr. Bruce Perry, Chief of Psychiatry at Texas
Children's Hospital in Houston, Texas, and we're here to talk about "the
meaning in words." How do words come to have meaning?

BRUCE
PERRY: Words are merely sounds until they become associated
with an object or an action or a feeling. And the way sounds come to have
meaning is through repetitive exposure to spoken language in context of
a relationship. An infant who heard spoken words only from a radio would
never really come to understand language. But the infant with a caregiver
who will say, "Here, see the dog, this is a doggy," or
open up a book and say, "Find the ball, find the ball," soon
learns that a unique combination of sounds signify the dog or the ball.
As soon as the infant makes the connection between the object and the
sounds, then those sounds become a word. That's how meaning comes to words,
by making the association between the sound and the object. And of course,
later in life, we make the further association between the sounds, the
physical representation of the object (for example, a photo or a drawing)
and the written word. In the beginnings of our lives, however, sounds
become words through repetitive opportunities of experiencing the parent,
teacher, or caregiver making the connection between the sound and an object,
or the sound and a behavior, or the sound and a feeling. That's why it's
so important that we spend time with our young children and infants teaching
them language. We can't teach them language by putting them in front of
a video or a TV. But we can teach children language by reading to them,
talking with them, singing to them.

HELEN
BENHAM: You often refer to the "somatosensory bath" as being
the core of all human interactions. What exactly is this "bath," and how
do people experience it in different ways?

BRUCE
PERRY: When in utero, we are literally bathed completely in
the mother's environment. Every sight, sound, touch, scent, and vibration
 every sensation is coming from that mother's world, a bath of sensations.
After birth, this "bath" changes. Yet, all of the infant's senses
are bathed in a continuous set of sensations, most of which derive from
the primary caregivers. And nothing is more soothing, reassuring, or pleasurable
than when the infant is bathed by the mother's touch, gaze, scent, and
taste  the baby is calm, full, warm, and happy. As we get older, this
somatosensory bath takes different forms: the hug, the smile, and
the handshake. When someone gazes at you, when somebody puts his or her
arm around you, when you dance, or touch, there is a connection back to
our original somatosensory bath. These actions serve as shortcuts to the
feelings of our original somatosensory bath. Touch is a wonderful way
to communicate. Eye contact. A smile. As you get older, because you've
been able to absorb and internalize and essentially create a memory of
how wonderful it was to be in that bath, later on a good smile can actually
tap into a tiny bit of that and you literally evoke the feelings from
that time, and you feel pleasure when someone smiles at you.

HELEN
BENHAM: You believe that language is born in relationship 
specifically in nonverbal, social, and emotional communication. How does
this work?

BRUCE
PERRY: Well, the core of language is communication. Language
exists to help people communicate, and again, the primary mode of human
communication is nonverbal. And this nonverbal communication starts from
birth, if not before. The infant communicates a sense of distress or hunger
or cold or fear by fussing and, ultimately, crying. The caregiver will
respond with attention, touch, cooing, rocking  which communicates to
the infant, "I'm here and present. You're safe. I'll care for you."
Without words, there is communication, back and forth, child to mother
to child. It is out of this matrix, this relational matrix, that spoken
language has derived.

HELEN
BENHAM: Can you give a dramatic instance of when words might
become detached from their meaning?

BRUCE
PERRY: The important part about human communication is that
it is this wonderful, complex combination of nonverbal cues and verbal
language, and when those are synchronous, it can be incredibly powerful.
But when someone is using words that don't match the action or don't match
the emotion that's being conveyed, it's confusing. Everyone has had that
feeling that "this just doesn't fit or there's more to that story."
I work with many abusive parents and one of the things I'll hear them
say all the time is "I love my baby; I love my child." And this
is sometimes within hours of them putting a cigarette butt out on the
child, or leaving the child for 48 hours with no food, or beating the
child senseless. And clearly, the meaning of the word "love" for someone
who would do that to their child is different than the meaning of the
word "love" for most parents.

HELEN
BENHAM: What does it mean to those parents?

BRUCE
PERRY:It means different things,
but it's what many of these parents experienced when they were growing
up  that is, an absence of true, loving attention. No one ever held them,
rocked them, or responded to them. No one ever gave them love. The actions
or behaviors  those things that are what "love" really is  were rare
in their lives. And then they heard the word "love" in context of possession:
"I love this food. I love my shoes. I love this television show."
And, in many ways, unfortunately, they feel very much that that word conveys
possession, as in, "That's my child. I love that child."
As opposed to "That's my child. I will do anything for my child not
to be hurt."

I think one of the
great examples of the two different meanings of the word "love"is
demonstrated in the story about Solomon's solution to the two mothers
who claimed the same infant as their own. One mother's child had died
and she wanted a child. The other mother had her infant taken by the other
mother. No one except the mothers really knew whose baby this was. When
presented to Solomon, he said, "Cut the child in half and give half
to each woman." The true mother who loved the child was willing to
give up the child so that the child would live. One mother wanted to possess
a baby; the true mother loved the baby. That's a great example of the
difference between the word "love" as possession and the word "love"in its truest meaning.

HELEN
BENHAM:What do we as adults do
unknowingly to confuse the meaning in words for our children, and how
can we do a better job?

BRUCE
PERRY: One of the major problems is when adults have a disconnection
between what they say and what they do. Children pay attention and learn
from what we do much more than from what we say. So, if we perform an
action and then we use words that don't match the action, children get
confused about language. Furthermore, they get confused about not only
the specific use of those words, but they also generalize. They learn
that words used by Mom or Dad really don't mean what they say. A classic
example is if two kids are sort of fighting back and forth, and one hits
the other and the parent goes over and hits the child on the rump and
says, "Don't hit!" That really doesn't mean "don't hit" to the
child; it means "don't hit until you get older  or bigger."

HELEN
BENHAM: What about when children use words that are disrespectful,
obscene, or negative in some way? What should the adult's response be
to that?

BRUCE
PERRY:Children, as they're learning
language, begin to see the power in different words. Not all words have
the same power. What they find is that there are certain words that will
get an adult's attention. For young children, these are typically body-function
words. As we get older, sexualized words become more popular. Or, there
are some children, who when they get frustrated or overwhelmed, and don't
feel they're getting the attention of their parents, will say, "I
wish I were dead." They usually don't really wish they were
dead. But they know that as soon as they say that, everybody stops, everybody
looks and pays attention. They learn, "Wow, that's a powerful phrase."
So children use words and word play to literally experiment, to find out
what the meaning of the word really is. What is a word that is not powerful?
Does "please" really work? Does "thank you" really work? What if I say
a racial epithet? That's a powerful word. Profanity and other shocking
words get the attention of the adults, and when children get the attention
of adults with a few words, children learn the power in specific words.
But as children experiment with profanity or other inappropriate words,
such as slurs, we need to stop and instruct them. We need to help them
understand more about that word. And often we need to explain why Grandpa
or Dad or Mom used that word  and why they shouldn't use that word. It
is a major challenge to many adults to think more clearly about how they
use language. You can be assured that if you use certain words, your children
will as well. Part of our task, then, when teaching language is helping
children understand the appropriate context for some words and the power
to harm in some words, and importantly, the power to heal that language
can have. If we give children our attention, and think about what comes
out of our mouths, we can help children learn the responsible use of language.

HELEN
BENHAM:Since many children spend
so much of their time out of the home in the care of other adults, and
assuming the meaning of words requires an authentic emotion, what are
the ramifications in terms of children getting enough of what they need
in a group setting?

BRUCE
PERRY: Well the most important ramification is that anywhere
you send your child  any adults you trust your child to  really should
understand children. They should understand that children learn language
by being spoken with and not by just hearing sounds. Children require
attention, children require nurturing, and children require relational
interactions with attentive caregivers. If the caregivers are well informed,
if they are solid, caring people, if they like children, if they're going
to spend time with the child in a healthy way, you can feel much more
confident your child is benefiting from enrichment experiences that will
help her learn. On the other hand, if there are dozens of other kids,
and one overwhelmed adult who has a limited understanding of child development,
then this is not the optimal way for your child to spend the day. We really
have to be vigilant about the adults spending time with our children.
We have to make sure that these individuals understand how to communicate
with kids; that they understand how important speaking with a child is;
and that they know how important nurturing a child's social and emotional
development is.

HELEN
BENHAM: What effect does our e-mail- and voicemail-driven world
have on our need for the nonverbal communication?

BRUCE
PERRY:I think that all of these
efficient and, in general, positive forms of communication really don't
have the crucial element of human contact. If these are the only methods
of communication that someone relies on, over time there will be tremendous
problems, particularly in any team, in any group, or any business setting
that requires a sense of unity or social cohesion in order to work. So
without the human contact that is absolutely essential for effective motivational
communication  for effective social, emotional communication  you're
just going to have words on paper without the social or emotional power
that words can carry.

HELEN
BENHAM: Digging deeper, what do you think the long-term developmental
effects of virtual experiences are on our young children who are living
on that line between fantasy and reality?

BRUCE
PERRY:I really think that because
the human brain has this tremendous capacity to adapt and modify itself
to the environmental circumstances, there are going to be inevitable differences
in the way children process and think about the world around them. If
you grow up in this electronic world, I'm convinced that areas and capacities
in your brain will organize and adapt differently compared to someone
raised without modern media. Brain organization in someone raised in a
pre-literate, verbal culture is different than the brain organization
of someone who is raised in a literate, verbal culture. Brain organization
of somebody raised in an environment that is filled with hours and hours
of exposure to television and communications through telephones and computers
is going to have a different brain organization than someone who was in
a purely classical verbal domain. With that said, I don't know exactly
what the impact will be. I do think that if this world becomes filled
with person-to-machine relationships, one of the potential shortcomings
is that there will be fewer and fewer opportunities for social learning
and complex social-emotional interactions because of the number of hours
that are spent away from other human beings.

HELEN
BENHAM: Do you make a judgment then about the explosion of
electronic toys for very young children, and computer software, and, of
course, television? Do you think these are bad influences?

BRUCE
PERRY: I think that computers, television, radio, and all of
our modern forms of communication have tremendously powerful and positive
potential. I also think, however, they have tremendously powerful and
negative potential as well. It depends upon when in life you're exposed
to these things, how much time you're exposed to them, and the attenuating
or alternative opportunities you have for real human relationships. If
you take a young child, and carve 30 percent out of his day and allocate
it for non-human interaction, what you're doing is cutting off a certain
percentage of time that the child might have for social-emotional development
at the cost of developing some unknown capacity for a certain kind of
abstraction associated with electronic communications, whether it's through
a computer or watching television or whatever. That capability will develop
at the cost of social and emotional development. So, television, computer
games, and e-mail  all of these new forms of communication, all of these
incredible opportunities for stimulating our brains and taking information
and efficiently transmitting it, are tremendous opportunities for us.
But they need to be used in sensible ways only at the right times in life.
The older you are, the more likely it is that these will be aids to communication,
as opposed to impediments to the development of communication capabilities.
Even in adult life, they need to be used in the right context and never
to the exclusion of face-to-face human communication.

HELEN
BENHAM: Scholastic is launching the Clifford television
series in the fall on PBS. Do you have any advice for us as a company
in our development of this program?

BRUCE
PERRY: Make it relational. Shows like this can be tremendously
positive because they can model for children. They can show children a
host of things that the they will experience in their own lives. Children
can learn about loss, sharing, and thinking. You can communicate tremendous
things using a show like this. However, one of the things that you might
resist is making this show like so many other shows for children in that
it uses fewer words and more images. If you have a relational show that
has lots of words and lots of conversation, children will watch it. But
you must make the show have compelling conversation, a compelling story,
and characters that children like. If you do these things, children will
tolerate and enjoy longer scenes, true conversation, and more complex
ideas.

HELEN
BENHAM: You've talked a lot about the importance of the match
between the words and the emotional content, the nonverbal communication.
Will you summarize why that's important, and also address the reality
that some adults simply don't have that ability to be expressive verbally?

BRUCE
PERRY: Well, different people have a different capacity for
the richness and the complexity of their nonverbal communication. Some
people just feel very constrained. They're much more reserved. They're
not very emotive. But as long as that's their consistent style, as long
as their words have always matched the affect they present, there is internal
consistency. So a child may have two parents who have very different styles
of communication. For example, in a family where the reserved Norwegian
marries the expressive Italian, you will find major differences between
the communication styles of each parent. When the reserved parent says,
"I love you" to the child, it will be said a certain way, with
a certain context, with a certain eye contact, with a certain kind of
touch. And the other parent will exhibit a different level of touch, a
different level of intensity, and a different level of expressed emotion.
But because they're both internally consistent, that will be fine for
the child.

HELEN
BENHAM: Thank you so much, Dr. Perry. We're sorry you can't
be here in person at our National Early Childhood Advisory Board meeting,
but we're thankful that you were able to share your insights on the meaning
in words.

BRUCE
PERRY: Thank you for the opportunity.

*This
document was originally presented at Scholastic's National Early Childhood
Advisory Board meeting on Friday, May 19, 2000, in New York City.

Dr. Bruce D. Perry,
M.D., Ph.D., is an internationally recognized authority on brain development
and children in crisis. Dr. Perry leads the ChildTrauma Academy, a pioneering
center providing service, research and training in the area of child maltreatment
(www.ChildTrauma.org). In addition
he is the Medical Director for Provincial Programs in Children's Mental
Health for Alberta, Canada. Dr. Perry served as consultant on many high-profile
incidents involving traumatized children, including the Columbine High
School shootings in Littleton, Colorado; the Oklahoma City Bombing; and
the Branch Davidian siege. His clinical research and practice focuses
on traumatized children-examining the long-term effects of trauma in children,
adolescents and adults. Dr. Perry's work has been instrumental in describing
how traumatic events in childhood change the biology of the brain. The
author of more than 200 journal articles, book chapters, and scientific
proceedings and is the recipient of a variety of professional awards.